When the question of what will define 2017 comes up, the response most often includes words such as “Trump” and “populism” and “division” and “anger”.
“Green”? Not so much.
Yet if you believe the team at the Pantone Colour Institute, which calls itself the “global colour authority”, green will be everywhere in 2017. Not just any old green, of course: Pantone 15-0343, colloquially known as greenery, is a “yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring”. And it is the Colour of the Year for 2017.
Although you may not realise it, it turns out that green has everything to do with all of those other things. Not literally. (Despite the fact that President-elect Donald Trump clearly loves green — at least when it comes to dollars — he rarely wears it, and it doesn’t figure much in his decorating sense or what we know of his diet.) But emotionally and imaginatively.
“We know what kind of world we are living in: one that is very stressful and very tense,” said Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Colour Institute.
“This is the colour of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature. It speaks to what we call the ‘re’ words: regenerate, refresh, revitalise, renew. Every spring we enter a new cycle and new shoots come from the ground. It is something life-affirming to look forward to.”
In other words, if 2016 was a miserable year for you, whether because of elections or market forces or because you were suckered by fake news on Facebook, this suggests the possibility of something different in 2017.
It contains within it the promise that we can all start afresh, with a healthier attitude unfurling like a pea shoot and our feet firmly planted on the earth, as opposed to that isolated, alienating place known as cyberspace.
That may seem facile as a reading, but, well ... who ever said humanity was subtle? Certainly the psychology of colour ranges from the obvious (red represents aggression; pink is swaddling and calms people) to the chiaroscuro.
When the Pantone team started noticing the creeping preponderance of green, there was a sense that perhaps it reflected what was regarded earlier this fall as the possibility of a new beginning with the first female president. But in the wake of Mr Trump’s victory and the dissension it highlighted, Ms Eiseman said, green “could have an even more significant meaning”.
“This particular green is an unusual colour: a combination of yellow and blue, or warmth and a certain cool,” she said. “It’s a complex marriage.”
Which is probably putting what is going to have to happen in the current political climate mildly.
Pantone started choosing Colours of the Year at the turn of the millennium, in part as a way to demonstrate the psychology around what makes a colour take off and to answer the question every fashion person is routinely asked, “Why is the colour ... so popular this season?”
A Tiffany damask chair from Haute House of Los Angeles uses a "yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring".
Although the selections serve no direct consumer purpose — Pantone doesn’t sell any products related to the choices, nor does it license a symbol to other companies to denote they are using the Colour of the Year — and hence the company has no way of measuring the effect of its declaration, the colours have become a sort of windsock for determining which way the national mood is blowing.
Certainly, you will soon see brands and retailers promoting products available in the Colour of the Year. Airbnb is already collaborating with Pantone on a Colour of the Year “experience”, transforming one of its listed properties into an immersive greenery environment.
You could argue that the selection is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, except the point is that the products are already there (otherwise they couldn’t be marketed so immediately), which supports Pantone’s contention that it has identified a burgeoning trend.
For 2015, thus, it chose Marsala, an “earthy” red-brown shade named after the fortified wine, which also happened to be the colour of many US politicians’ ties leading up to election year, in part because the colour conveys a sense of comfort and security. For 2013, it was emerald, as seen that year on Michelle Obama in Marchesa at the Kennedy Centre Honours, a dress that practically broke the internet.
Last year, Pantone took the radical step of choosing two colours — serenity and rose quartz (aka baby blue and light pink) — the better to reflect the gender-bending move toward “equality and fluidity” taking place across society (and fashion).
The process, which takes about nine months, is highly subjective, as Pantone admits, and more about instinct than science. Essentially, the team fans out across the globe and explores industries, to collect what they refer to as “proof points” — from car shows, on the runways, in decorator showcases and so on. At a certain stage they begin to notice meaningful overlap and narrow down the choices. Then one shade achieves critical mass.
“We ask ourselves about the message that colour brings, and how we may be trying to use colour to shape our experience,” Ms Eiseman said.
This time they started noticing a startling ubiquity of leaf green. There was leaf green on the runway, for example, poking up around the fall 2014 shows and building through spring 2017, when brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, Michael Kors and Prada (to name a few) all featured it to varying extents. Tech companies like using leaf green in their offices.
The Cite de la Mode et du Design, which houses the French Institute of Fashion, features a transparent walkway, lit in leaf green, visible from the Seine. Matcha tea is, well, hot.
The new Mercedes-AMG GT Roadster comes in a particularly fetching shade of leaf green. Green walls are becoming architectural staples in the form of vertical gardens, and green juice is everywhere. The Green party is growing in prominence.
Dr Strange wears a green amulet known as the eye of Agamotto, which has migrated into the children’s costume universe. Dior’s new makeup colours include a lip shade called “clover”, which is all you need to know.
Although many women may recoil when they are told green is the Colour of the Year — some think it is hard to wear — Julianne Moore wore leaf green Givenchy to the 2016 Screen Actors Guild awards, and Hillary Clinton wore it on the campaign trail. If, as fashion theory holds, three examples of anything is a trend, this is a tsunami.
“There’s a Japanese concept called ‘forest bathing’ which says that when you are feeling stressed, one of the best things to do is go walk in the forest,” Ms Eiseman said. “But if you can’t do that, what can you do? Bring green into your environment. Put in on your body, or in your house or near your desk. That symbolic message is very important.”
In any case, you get the idea. And if you don’t, the seeds have been planted. It will grow on you.
